Last year, I spent Valentine’s Day sobbing into a beer in Nicaragua. And I don’t even like beer.

After leaving my marriage of 8 years before Christmas, I imposed my 37 year old, emotional-tornado-of-a-self on my retired parents in Florida. Around the same time, a girlfriend reached out to tell me that the quaint surf & yoga retreat in Nicaragua she taught at occasionally was looking for a yoga teacher. As the month of January ticked by, a working-holiday felt like an increasingly good idea. Nicaragua with all it’s political unrest, seemed safer than another month with my well-intentioned parents. Besides, my blubbering, broken heart needed my attention. Rather than escape from, I craved time to turn towards everything I was experiencing. Solitude, salt water, and uncrowded, sandy spaces seemed like the salve I should lovingly apply. 

I would learn to surf, I told myself. I would read. I would write. I would walk on the beach, and I would do yoga in their pretty, little, thatched roof, open-air shala that overlooked the ocean. I would melt into sunsets, and star-gaze to the sound of waves crashing on the shore. I would fly my cheerful, yellow, 10-foot-wide kite that is a trainer-kite for kiteboarding, which I use more as a large meditation device that helps me communicates with the power of the wind.   

And I did all those things.

Also, stupidly, I went out on Valentine’s Day. 

Valentine’s Day is a big deal in Nicaragua, I found out. A real party with red and pink lanterns, a DJ, and even a cover charge. People of all ages danced the bachata, drank, and the atmosphere was generally pretty merry. My inner landscape, however, sounded more like this: What am I even doing here? How has my life come to fielding the advances of overwhelmingly-forward latin men in a bar somewhere in Central America? Memories of past V-Days bossily pushed their way into my mind, and triggered a deeper swelling of my already dangerously high emotional tide. How did I not realize I was WAY too fragile to be here??? Externally, I nodded absently to a dark & vaguely handsome guy who tried to explain to me where he surfs via Google Translate. Internally, my mind battled my feelings as they rose. My eyes swept the crowd hoping for a solution, or a trap door that might graciously swallow me up entirely. The people I had come with were scattered about and seemed to be enjoying themselves. Not one to ask for what I need, and definitely not one to interrupt someone’s good time, I felt very stuck. In the end it was more than my heart could manage. The vice in my chest tightened further, squeezing burning tears from my heart, into a hard, pressurized ball in my throat. Which reliably boiled over and spilled out of my big brown eyes. They weren’t soft, sad tears, these were Uncontrollable Sobs. The kind where your diaphragm is hijacked by emotion and breath is sucked in and pushed out in sharp, jerky spurts. Needless to say the vaguely handsome guy was baffled as to what just happened, and now I had the attention of everyone I had come to the bar with. I was hot with embarrassment and couldn’t get a handle on myself. I was put in a taxi with a woman I had met a few days earlier. As Murphy’s Law dictates, the taxi broke down about a kilometer from the surf camp. After trying unsuccessfully to push the taxi back to life, we gestured that we would walk the rest of the way. It was 1A.M. as we navigated the rocky, dirt road by the light of our iPhones. Dogs from each dwelling we passed sprung awake, barking menacingly at us wandering along the in the dark. The sudden fear of getting chased by aggressive dogs made my adrenaline flow fast, which promptly yanked me from the emotional deep end. Phew. Thank goodness for fear, right? 

I’m not sure what inspires me to re-live and share this with you all today. Maybe it is the feeling I get when I realize how much has changed in a year. A short year. A long year. Time is such a marvelous, shape-shifter, isn’t it? When our personal storms are raging, it can feel impossible to imagine when we will next rejoice in the figurative warmth of a peaceful, sunny, day. And for me, it was a while that I walked around feeling fairly wretched and soggy in the wake of separation. Weathering our storms can be quite exhausting, am I right? There is the actual weathering of the storm, and then the being told how to best weather the storm – peanut galleries & advice columns aplenty. And from what I could see, on the other side of the storm was ‘Dating’ and I sure as hell was in no hurry to get there!  Diving into the world as a single person after a 10 year relationship felt so Daunting, with a capital D. I wasn’t the same person I was a decade ago. And the world most certainly wasn’t the same world it was a decade ago either. Smart phones, and dating apps, and social media, oh my! Like Dorothy, landed in Oz – I had no bearings in this new territory.  Like that night a year ago in Nicaragua: I felt helpless, scared, and pretty overwhelmed just thinking about it. But do you know what I also felt? Strangely curious. So while I avoided dating, I became fascinated by my metaphorical ‘weather’. I wanted to learn about the pressure systems that guide my patience (or lack thereof), and to pore over my emotional tide charts. I aspired to decipher the wind patterns of my worrying, and to examine how and why the undercurrents of my thoughts flow the way that they do. I hoped a deeper understanding of the movement within me would anchor me somehow. More storms would come, I knew that for sure. But maybe by studying the different components of my personal weather, I could be more prepared? I read books, I meditated, I listened to podcasts, and sought out relevant articles. I did yoga, and went paddling. I questioned my mother. Like really questioned her. I shared with my journey friends and listened to their experiences. 

Then, one summer day, late in August, there was a gentle tap at my door. Much to my surprise, it was Romantic Love (let’s call him RL, for short). I cracked my window open to ask RL what he was doing here anyways; I hadn’t invited him, after all. He said he could tell I was home, and then I awkwardly bumbled something about being up to my eyeballs studying the weather,  and attempting to clean up some messes I’d made, so…

RL smiled kindly, and assured me he thought weather patterns were fascinating. He asked me attentive questions, and listened patiently to my replies. It wasn’t long before I hesitantly opened the door and invited him in. It’s an interesting process opening up to Love in a new time of life. I worried it was too soon. I was scared I wasn’t ready. And I didn’t yet know everything there was to know about my weather patterns! What if I messed this up entirely? 

But there was a hint of Knowing that whispered to me that I should try. Just try.

The months to follow were incredible, but challenging; heart opening, and super scary at the same time. I’m continuously trying to stay connected to a willingness to share the all the weather systems of my soul with another. Now, this Valentine’s Day, a year on from the emotional tsunami that overtook my heart in Nicaragua, RL and I shared simple bike ride. In the park, we sprawled lazily on a blanket under some palm trees. His hand rests warmly on the small of my back; a sweet connection while he reads, and I write. Inside and out, I gratefully rejoice in the warmth of this peaceful, sunny day. At last.

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